Superintendents sound alarm over NYSUT teacher evaluation proposal

With the state in the midst of implementing its overhaul of the way educators are evaluated in New York, a proposal from New York State United Teachers, the state’s largest teachers union, has some school officials raising red flags.

As districts rush to implement a new system for evaluating teachers in time for the new school year, some administrators say a review method crafted in part by the powerful teachers union has left them with a tricky political situation to navigate.

Earlier this month, the state Education Department unveiled five rubrics that can be used by school districts as the basis for a portion of a teacher’s evaluation score. One of those was the New York State United Teachers model, which was drawn up after the union received a grant in 2009.

Now some school officials say that even if they believe the NYSUT model is the best fit for their district, they’d have a hard time selling it to taxpayers because of the direct impact the rubric would have on the union’s members.

“One of the things that people have raised is that there could be an appearance concern,” said Robert Lowry, a spokesman for the state Council of School Superintendents. “The NYSUT rubric could be of a very high quality, but it could be a political problem for a school district to say they’re going to evaluate our teachers based on materials developed by their union, and explaining it to the public might be a challenge in some places.”

NYSUT, however, wasn’t pleased with the notion that the model is a “union rubric.”

NYSUT spokesman Carl Korn categorically denied the characterization that the union crafted its model alone. A task force of six school districts and their local union representatives piloted the program and help develop the rubric, which was based on national education expert Charlotte Danielson’s framework and follows the state teaching standards.

That task force, Korn said, had equal representation from school districts and labor representatives. The rubric is called the NYSUT Teacher Practice Rubric, but only because the union was the one that received the grant to fund its development, according to Korn.

“That’s flat-out wrong,” Korn said. “This rubric is the result of a year-and-a-half of work done by labor management teams of superintendents, administrators and teachers, trying to figure out the best way to do this. It was not designed just by teachers.”

As part of the law, districts have to negotiate with local union chapters over which system to implement. Korn said they’re encouraging both their local union leaders and school districts to take a serious look at the NYSUT rubric, but said both sides are free to do what they wish.

The NYSUT rubric can be viewed below. The full story can be read here.